RFDer @mech9t5 sampled Visa's and Mastercard's daily foreign exchange rates for 364 days and averaged them. He found that Mastercard's average markup over XE.com's reported mid-market rate was 0.188%, while Visa's was 0.392%. No statistics were available for American Express. The ~0.2% advantage that Mastercard has over Visa has NOT been included in the net rewards listed above.

† AMERICAN EXPRESS WARNING

If you use your Canadian American Express card (including Scotiabank Amex) to make purchases in a currency other than CAD or USD, your purchases will be converted to USD first, before being converted again to CAD for billing purposes. This dual conversion will result in less net reward than described above.

Last edited by Kiraly on Jun 4th, 2020 2:11 pm, edited 119 times in total.

Important!! since 2016, Canadian CC issuers do not reimburse the 2.5% FTF on refunds. This can be particularly annoying on hotel deposits. This is also a nuisance on category accelerators on refunds, since the accelerators get clawed back, but the FTF does not get reimbursed on returns.

Note all of those said cases and future risks of your money lost to uncompensated 2.5% FTF mentioned repeatedly in this thread and other threads may be avoided entirely by you '(knowingly) choosing to use' a "true no-FTF" card given in OP that has the robust benefit of "0% forex fee" charges anywhere.
This means that regardless of when and how small or big the *applicable* card rewards redeemed, lost or ineligible over Visa/MC/Brim/Amex interchange posted charges, that rare "0% forex fee" feature has already eliminated all that FTF money that would have cost you 'for any forex situations unexpected or not' without worry, effort or your redemption actions, e.g., unlike FTF charging cards' rebates program, the no-FTF instant benefits stays useful even 'in refunds/cancellations/corrections of posted transactions, or purchase returns and also any cash-like transactions like pre-paid/loaded atm cash advance needs all in foreign currencies' done on the "0% forex fee" card chosen from OP.

Guessing it's due to 4% times the higher purchase price (grossed up by the 2.5% fee), which appropriately nets out to 1.6%. It's the Rogers cards where I've heard (here, not first-hand) they actually work out to net 1.5%. Difference may be due to Rogers' bonus being on 'foreign currency transactions' and they treat it in such a way to net out that way. Others with 4% on Gas/Grocery/Entertainment just give the category bonus based on merchant code and apply FX rate like they would on any other purchase.

Yes, Scotiabank pays out 4% on whatever amount appears on your statement, which would include the 2.5% forex fee. Buy CDN $100 worth of gas in the USA, $102.50 appears on your statement. You earn 4% on $102.50, which is $4.10. You end up paying $98.40, which is a net return of 1.6%.

Marriott card is not exactly 1%. Its 1 Marriott pt per $ for regular purchases (worth about $0.008/0.8%), 2pt/$ (1.6%) for restaurants, airlines, car rentals; 5pt/$ (4%) at SPG and Marriott. Also includes an annual night at a cat 5 Marriott ($100-300 value) and 15 nights for Silver Elite.

foreigncontent wrote: ↑
but it's not 1%, because the points are worth LESS than that

You could also approach though on the assumption that whoever is using it will ultimately convert them to SPG. If you assume an SPG point valued at 3%, and 3:1 conversion from Marriott to SPG, that means you land right on 1% for the Marriott points, which is how a number of people choose to look at it.